Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The year before, I brought back an entire The Face Shop haul. It was my first maiden trip to the land of kimchi-and-soju, and maiden introduction to South Korean skincare and cosmetics. Almost 12 months later, I m back again to the much colder and wintery (this time around) land of Korea.

Before deciding what to get, I made some enquiries with my Korean female friends. The most popular range echoed by most korean ladies 30s and above were under Amore Pacific's brands from Sulwhalsoo (premium korean brand), Mamonde (20s-30s) and Laneige (20s-30s).

I know that we can get most korean skincare range for less in South Korea, but my tour guide gave us a piece of advice: For the price of what I would pay in Malaysia, it will be about the same retail price of a better premium skincare range in South Korea. Confusing? No. It makes perfect sense.

Since the former first two brands are almost unheard of in Malaysia, I decided to get the brand that we all recognise- LANEIGE.

There are ARITAUM and Laneige stores all over South Korea, but there are more ARITAUM shops, which retail the entire range of Amore Pacific's brands. However, if you are specifically looking for the skincare named AMORE PACIFIC, it can only be found in the major departmental stores, and not at ARITAUM.

ITAEWON @ 14th January 2010.

At the backpackers I was staying at, Seoul Backpackers, some of the boarders (female travellers from Hong Kong) told me there was a Duty-Free Laneige shop in Itaewon. Since I had never been to Itaewon, I decided to catch the subway there and check out the store.

There is a sign outside that writes in korean "Only For Foreigners". The store is a bit nondescript looking, so a passerby may not even notice it there. Next to the store is The North Face, which retails winter jackets, and there is also a KEB Exchange Bank a few doors away. I did go into KEB Exchange Bank to change some money later. They do accept Australian as well as Singaporean Dollars.

In the Duty-Free Laneige store, there were a couple of assistants who spoke Cantonese. They didn't speak that much English, so it makes perfect sense why those two travellers led me to go there. You would not need to show your passport, as the fact that one does not speak the korean language shows that you are a foreigner anyways!